SCOUTING YESTERDAY: Serpent effigy at Medicine Knoll dates back five centuries

This week In South Dakota history: July 19-25

A 2,731 foot snake effigy at Snake Butte. (South Dakota Magazine)

South Dakota is home to most known serpent effigies built by Northern Plain Indians, rooted in legends of creatures destroying villages, vision quests and battle.

Two historical markers were placed along the Black and Yellow Trail in Hughes County after Dr. Doane Robinson made the request to place the markers on behalf of the state historical department, according to an article published in the The Miller Press on July 19, 1923.

A bronze tablet, placed at Snake Butte where the Black and Yellow Trail cuts through the bluff, was donated by the Pierre chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. A boulder was placed in a break in the bluff with the tablet bolted to it.

The marker recalled a Sioux legend of the bluff and read, “The Indian tradition is that a large serpent (perhaps a cyclone) leaped out from this butte and destroyed a whole village.”

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